[It's complicated. It's hard to tell what came to me first, but I'm sure I must have had something in my mind. When the Louvre Museum asked me to make a film, instead of telling me what they wanted me to make, they asked me what I wanted to make. I thought for a moment and told them I wanted to film Jean-Pierre Léaud's face. I wanted to film Jean-Pierre and Lee Kang-sheng meeting. After, I needed to figure out why I wanted to film their faces, and I definitely needed a strong concept.]

APA: 《臉》這部電影可以說是和西方藝術結合的, 那麼作為一個立足台灣的導演, 怎樣在電影中和西方文化融合?

[One can say that Face is a film that mixes with Western arts. As a Taiwanese director, how did you manage to combine these different cultures in your movie?]

[For me, filmmaking is very personal. Of course, it's a different situation when you talk about Hollywood and commercial movies. I think that every director has his own fate. I don't think of what I do in terms of the film industry. Rather, I see my work as the creation of exquisite craft, and not something you might buy on the street. I hope my films one day sell for large amounts of money, and are worth more than the few dollars of a movie ticket. I want to develop more interesting ideas, which isn't something I can do just by thinking about it. An entire movement is necessary to push me ahead. When the film industry is commercialized to the extreme, do we still have any personal expression? If we don't have personal expression, the art of film is gone. The only thing left are commodities. We shouldn't keep saying that “movies are art” and therefore we don't watch them.

Creation is strictly personal. No matter where I am placed, I will always try to express myself. It's a great honor that the Louvre Museum invited me to make the film, but there's no way that I can become a French person in just three years. It's impossible to totally understand French culture in three years. I tried hard nevertheless and did a lot of own research. Yet, I can't say that I have deep insight into the culture. Instead, all I could do was make my film more personal. For example, using Jean-Pierre Léaud in the film is based on my own understanding of French films and respect for French actors. The scene where Jean-Pierre and Lee Kang-sheng meet in the Louvre Museum came out of my own imagination and fantasy. Ultimately, I can't just make a film in the Louvre about Eastern culture. I have to consider Western culture – but to arrive at my own understanding of Western culture. Westerners criticize my version of Salome's dancing because it's different from their expectations. I respond that it's because you forget that each movie has its own director. This is my Salome dance. This is my expression, so it is valid. It's like how Van Gogh might have a different picture of things.]

[You can say that. But there're a lot more -- countless. For example, there's a scene in Face where Lee Kang-sheng and Jean-Pierre are sitting together in a studio, and they end up listing a lot of directors' names. All of them are my favorite directors. I could have gone on all day listing.]

APA: 你說到每個導演都有自己的命, 那你覺得自己對於華語電影的影響是什麼?

[You've mentioned that every director has his own fate. What do you think is your place in Chinese film?]

[After the screening of Face in New York [Nov. 15 2009], a Taiwanese film student asked my translator to pass his story onto me: When he was 16, his mother kicked him out of the house, and he was depressed and wandering alone in the street. He went to a small movie theatre and happened to watch my film Rebels of the Neon God. From then on, he decided to study film. A similar story was told to me in Japan. And then, when I was in Poland publishing a book, I was told that a lot of Polish directors are imitating me. They asked me whether this is good or not. I said, it's not bad -- better than replicating Hollywood. People who try to imitate me actually are trying to find their own personalities. After all, filmmaking always starts with imitation.

I can't tell how much impact my films have had. When I was at the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea, some audience members told me that they made a bet ten years ago on who would survive longer: Tsai Ming-liang or Wong Kar-wai. Of course they thought it would be Wong Kar-wai; plus, his films are better than mine. But it's a miracle that I am still making films every two years, which they found interesting.]

APA:現在回頭看自己十八年前的第一部長片《青少年哪吒》覺得怎樣?

[It's been eighteen years since your first feature film Rebels of the Neon God. What do you think of it now?]

[I rarely look back to my early works. In some circumstances -- for example, at film festivals -- I might get a chance to see the beginning, or the end, or part of the middle of one of my older films. I am always surprised to see how I used to make films, though I totally I accept it. People do different things at different ages. I can't do what I would do in my forties while still in my twenties, and a forty-year-old could never return to twenty. I just look at the road ahead, and rarely look back. I don't look back on which movies made money and which didn't. I just look at what I'm feeling and thinking, and I go ahead and express that.]

APA:你現在的電影創作和現實的摩擦還有嗎?

[After so many years of filmmaking, do you still have to make compromises in your films, due to practical demands?]

[Less and less. Maybe I'm lucky that I've never had to compromise much. Most of my films are made because they are commissioned: for example, the Louvre Museum project and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, where the city government of Vienna found me and gave me the money to make the film. Later we ran out of money, and there was a film company that helped me with fund-raising.

Here's the situation: not everyone in the world is that practical, only investing in directors who make money or hoping their investments make money. People all want to make money to earn a living, but still there are some producers and distributors who really like film. They like your work and are willing to invest in your work. They want you to keep working. So my way, from the very beginning, was to make films for twenty people, but to have these twenty people be able to bring my film to a larger audience. These twenty people include producers who like art films, but they might not necessarily like my work. Maybe they like Jia Zhangke's films. If they like Jia Zhangke's films, they will invest in him, and if they like mine, they will invest in me. These people don't see their work as a big business endeavor, because there would be less freedom if it were a big business.]

[When it comes to music, it's quite natural for me not to use too much. I like old songs. I think I'm very simple. I hardly move forward, and I am behind the times, so the things I like remain the same. A lot of things I don't easily agree with, but I won't refuse them either. Sometimes I will try to listen to something new, but songs from my youth and background still affect my emotions the most.]

APA:和李康生相處了這麼多年，兩人之間有什麼共同點嗎?

[You and Lee Kang-sheng have been worked together for so many years. What do you have in common, and what ties you together?]

[I don't know, I haven't thought about that. I just enjoy filming him. I think it's really amazing that you can always use the same actor, and [other than that,] it's nobody else's business. Plus, I don't need to care about the box office. Other actors may be replaced if they aren't famous, but Lee is lucky that I will never replace him. To me, it's a precious thing, the idea of filming someone becoming old and fat. Sometimes I hope that he doesn't become fat. But it's a sincere process.]

Interview with Lee Kang-sheng

APA:可以請你談一下這次在法國拍片的經歷嗎?

[Can you tell us something about your experience in France working on Face?]

[As an actor, I've never experienced so much courtesy, since we had adequate funding in France. Every actor and actress had his or her own trailer. We had French cuisine every day, which took more than an hour from appetizer to dessert, whereas in Taiwan, we would just have a quick lunch box. Plus the French crew is very professional and highly specialized.]

[It wasn't easy to communicate, because my foreign language skills are not very good -- and I'm even worse in French. But I think actors are born with sensitive perceptions -- we were always looking at each other to observe each other. We didn't talk in depth, so we used body language more often to act in the film.]

APA: 你現在自己也開始做導演了, 在創作和導演的過程中會不會受蔡明亮的影響?

[Now you're a director and have made your own film. Does Tsai Ming-liang influence your creative process?]

[I think it's very hard not to be affected by him, since I first got involved with film because of his work. In that way, he is my teacher. But when I am creating my own projects, I won't change my ideas because of what he says. Meanwhile, I don't care if my work is too close to his style. I just want to make my movie good.]

[I think I prefer being a director. Although I am under a lot of pressure in terms of funding and box office, my vision is much wider. Before, I only focused on acting. Now I get to be involved with everything, such as technology, lighting, cinematography, production design, and so on. So I prefer being a director.]

[That would be funding and distribution. Because our types of films are closer to the art world, the audience is smaller. So, we try to find our target audience. What Tsai and I do in Taiwan is to go to universities to give lectures.]

APA: 和蔡導相處這麼多年的關系怎麼樣?

[How's your relationship with Tsai like after working together for so many years?]

[Actually he was in a short film I did last year. It was part of the short film series Taipei 24H, produced by the Public Television Service in Taiwan. They divided Taipei into eight periods of time and found eight new directors to make short films, and I was one of them.]